Social Roles of Riddles, with Reference to Kasena Society
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The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. Research Review New Series 16.2 (2000) 35-51 SOCIAL ROLES OF RIDDLES, WITH REFERENCE TO KASENA SOCIETY A. KAwedoba Abstract Riddles have significant social roles which may be latent or overt. They include roles that may be described as cultural, educative, intellectual, ideological, cosmological and political. While some studies dismiss riddles as a genre lacking the capacity to improve the mind, since they involve stereotyped questions and responses, it is argued in this paper that riddles do indeed exercise the intellect more actively than the mere recollection of responses. Riddles teach logic, they compel audiences to engage in the contemplation of a variety of paradoxes and enigmas, they teach about the social and cultural environment, about social norms, about history and biology and much more. They can also be said to play a role in the formation of the intuitions that people acquire about their languages and social structures. An examination of riddle texts collected from some Kasena communities enhances and appreciates these varied functions of riddles. Introduction This paper attempts to discuss some of the latent and manifest roles of riddles and related aspects of verbal arts in African communities using the Kasena as a case study. Riddles appear not to have engaged the attention of many folklorists to the extent that other oral literary genres have, Nearer home, in Ghanaian societies, there seems to have been a conspiracy to ignore them. Yet they can be valuable in their own right1. Unlike the case of proverbs and folktales, some researchers seem skeptical about riddles as serious texts, especially as they are often perceived to be of interest primarily to children. A definition of riddles proposed by Kallen and Eastman (1979: 418) maintains in the Swahili case that they are '... puzzles to be solved through riddle interaction and symbolic activity rather than through deliberation on analytical processes'. The view being articulated here, that riddles do not involve deliberation and analytical processes, is one that is widely shared and is reflected in the work of Blacking (1961) who maintained that Venda riddles do not develop powers of logic and reasoning or stimulate the imagination. Blacking arrived at this view from the fact that in Venda riddling ' .. it is knowledge of the riddle that is more important than the ability to work it out'. There are however scholars who appreciate the value of riddles in the education of communities. Writing on the processes through which Yoruba riddlers arrive at solutions to their riddles, Afolabi (1976) remarked as follows: ...to arrive at an acceptable solution to the Yoruba riddles one has to be imaginative and recognise that the proposer of the riddles employs (a) metaphorical language, (b) elements of surprise bordering on the unbelievable and (c) a single characteristic of an object as focal point. 35 It is hard to see how Yoruba riddles, as described above, can fail to be analytical and logical Commenting on the functions of riddles, Burns (1976) referred to several, including their reflection of cognition and categories of the environment as well as the concerns of people; the role of riddles in training and exercising the intellect; their distillation of the cultural norms and values of a given society and their role as a valve through which aggressive feelings and sexual drive might find a verbal outlet. Riddles are also seen as mediating ambiguity and stimulating cognitive re-examination. Finally, they are said to promote unity and group cohesion. These sundry functions: cultural, educative, intellectual, ideological, cosmological and politicaK as summarised by Burns, are not exhaustive. The roles and functions of riddles would appear to be latent rather than manifest and this paper seeks to explore these further using material collected from a section of the Kasena.2 It can be expected that societies would differ in the extent to which their riddles attain some, all or even additional objectives over and above those mentioned here. The Kasena Dende The riddle as a folk literature genre has been defined variously since 400 AD when, according to Scott (1965:15), Cledonius Pompeius Julianus attempted a definition. Scott (op. cit.) goes on to inform us that the different attempts at the definition of the genre to this date have not been adequate. To Scott, these definitions '.. are little more than descriptions of some of the major characteristics of the genre, and tell us nothing about how the riddle qua genre is formally distinct from other literary or folkloristic genres within cultures.' Perhaps the problems of genre definition that bedevil the riddle are not unexpected as they inhere in most taxonomic classifications. These genres are polythetic in nature and a term such as riddle can best be seen as an 'odd job' word, The features that seem to be crucial in the definition of a genre in one. culture may not be so critical for the definition of the same genre in a different culture. We cannot discount the possibility that what are perceptually distinct and different genres in one culture might blend and shade into each other in another tradition. This perhaps precipitates the characterisation of some riddles as 'true riddles', some as 'proverb riddles', others as conundrums, fixed formulae riddles, nonsense riddles etc. (Gowlett 1979). In fact, riddles in this respect are no different from other social institutions such as marriage and kinship, which share this characteristic of polythetism (Needham 1975) serving as odd job words, to some anthropologists (Beattie 1964; Reviere 1971). Problems of genre definition which relate to variation and evidence of shared or overlapping features and characteristics should not however deter us from proposing definitions, especially working definitions, so long as it is remembered that classifications are rarely as exclusive as they may at first seem. According to Georges and Dundes (1963), a way out is to adopt a definition based on a structural analysis of riddles. 36 Another approach is perhaps to ensure that genre definitions take into account native classifications and perceptions, an approach that does not seem to have found any favour with folklorists. Inadequate understanding and appreciation of institutions, philosophies and practices in a foreign culture, as Gowlett (1979) remarks can be an impediment to the study of their genres. He suggests that the classification of some Bantu riddles as 'nonsense riddles' can only be very tentative and contingent upon further research and insights. This study will concern primarily the dende [dindi] and its features. Though dende, a Kasem word, can be translated by the term 'riddle' a caveat is necessary. Not all known manifestations of riddle reported in the literature will be classified by Kasena as dende, if presented to them.3 Just as the noun dendwe (dream) derives from the verb, dwe (to dream) through the processes of stem reduplication, similarly, cfen^derives from the verb de [di] (to drop). As we dream dreams, Kaseua say they 'drop their riddles'; riddles are 'dropped' in the sense that they seem to be uttered out of context. No other genre is ever said to 'drop' or 'be dropped1 when people engage in its performance. The riddle has two parts, the precedent (query, image) which is uttered or played by the proposer and the sequent (the answer, response, solution) which is supplied by the correspondent. The riddle precedent may be syntactically a question, command, exclamation, or statement. In this respect it is like any sentence except that it is de-contextualised and seems to come from out of the blue. It is the kind of sentence which if uttered outside the context of riddle performance could raise eyebrows. Take for example the riddle precedent, n ni ne konto, a ba beene mo na? (you fix your gaze on me like that, am I not coming towards you?) which is uttered in the night to a sedentary group. Who are you and who am I? Such a question would not otherwise fail to surprise the audience, but it does not because it is a riddle precedent. One of the features of riddles is their misdirection or indirection, which is only one strategy in the tiddler's bag. De-contextualisation is one form of indirection. Context of Performance Riddles, unlike proverbs (memaye) or witty sayings (senseiri), are a children's specialty in Kasena communities.4 Until recently it was the practice for children to entertain themselves in the evenings with riddles, folktales and children's games. There is however no session devoted exclusively to telling riddles or riddling, and at the same sitting children engaged in riddling, telling folktales and playing other games. They may begin with riddles, then move over to sedentary games and perhaps end with story-telling. The time devoted to riddles is often short by comparison with the telling of folktales; folktales are usually regarded as more interesting and exciting. This author is not aware that there is any prohibition on riddle performance, as is the case 37 with folktales which may not be told in the daylight hours. However, since folktales and riddles are associated it can be argued that any such restrictions on folktale performance would apply indirectly to riddling. The prohibition on daytime telling of folktales seems to preempt the likelihood of work time being wasted on folktales by idling youth. This is not necessarily an explanation that Kasena adults would themselves advance, unlike Venda people who adduced this explanation, as Blacking (1961:2) maintains.